Anti GE Tree Activists Kicked Off Florida University Campus, Spied on by FBI

A few months ago, while reporting an article about genetically engineered trees for Earth Island Journal’s Autumn issue (read the story here),
I had a mighty hard time locating plant biologists or genetic engineers
at academic institutions who were willing to talk about the possible
risks of growing GE trees in massive plantations. It seemed there was
little debate over this controversial issue within the biotech community
on college campuses — the very places where most of the research into
GE trees is carried out.

Critics
say there's little debate over this controversial issue within the
biotech community on college campuses — the very places where most of
the research into GE trees is carried out.
So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when I heard that a group
of environmental activists who were scheduled to make a presentation on
GE trees at the University of Florida in Gainesville last month were booted off the campus,
charged with trespassing, and banned from the university grounds for
three years. What did come as a bit of a surprise was news that the FBI,
too, was keeping tabs on the activists.
Genetically modified strains of trees like eucalyptus, pines,
poplars, and fruit trees are being tested in hundreds of trial plots
across the world, including the United States. In the US, except for a
GE papaya tree variety that is grown commercially in Hawai‘i, there are
no commercial GE tree plantations — yet. (The US Department of
Agriculture is considering a proposal to grow GE eucalyptus in
commercial plantations.) Some environmentalists are concerned that
transgenic trees will promote industrial monoculture plantations that
could have a huge impact on forest biodiversity.
The Gainesville campus GE tree presentation was part of a multi-week speaking tour, "The Growing Threat: Genetically Engineered Trees and the Future of Forests,"
organized by the Global Justice Ecology Project, Campaign to STOP GE
Trees, and Everglades Earth First! The speakers were traveling to
campuses in several southern states to raise awareness about the
proposed commercial release of genetically engineered, freeze-tolerant
eucalyptus trees in the US South.
The talk had been scheduled for October 28, a Monday. A conference
room had been booked at the university’s McKnight Brain Institute a
month in advance. But four days before the event, the institute
cancelled the booking. The institute officials first said it was because
they had to “give priority to brain and neuroscience related
functions.” On being pressed for clarification, they said the AV
equipment in the room wasn’t working and they couldn’t offer an
alternative space. The university student who had booked the room
checked the institute’s calendar and found that there were four other
conference rooms available, but institute officials didn’t respond to
his request for a new reservation by the time the weekend rolled in.
The Saturday before the event, the student and five other anti GE
tree campaigners turned up at the institute and tried to enter the
locked building to check whether the rooms were really unavailable. They
first tried to open the door using the student’s ID card and then tried
to talk staff and students into letting them in. Soon enough, cops
arrived on the scene and cited the six for trespassing (read the police report here).
The activists say the police were “unnecessarily aggressive” toward
them and didn’t seem interested in what they had to say. “We just wanted
to see if we could go in and find someone to talk to about helping us
out,” says Will Bennington, a campaigner with the Global Justice Ecology
Project who was cited for trespassing.
“We tried to get creative [in looking for ways to get in], but we
weren’t doing anything wrong. The long and short of it is we didn’t get
in and were walking off when [the police] arrived.”
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes says the activists “were very deceptive.”
She had a third, differing reason to offer for the cancelation.
“Instructional space is not available for non-university persons, groups
or organizations,” she told the Journal via email. It’s not
clear why the administration didn’t realize this at the time the booking
was made in September, or why the various reasons cited for the
cancelled bookings don’t match up.
Robbed of a venue, the activists instead gave a Skype presentation to UF Professor Bron Taylor’s environmental ethics class.
“I wasn’t, of course, at the building where they were confronted, so I
don’t know what exactly happened,” Taylor told me. “What I do know is
there is a dearth of discussion on the issue of genetically modified
organisms, both in the university and the world at large. And the debate
doesn’t happen in a rational manner because there’s an influx of
corporate money that manages the messaging.”
The University of Florida is one of the leading academic institutions
researching transgenic trees. In 2011, the university’s Florida School
of Forest Resources and Conservation and South Carolina-based GE tree
company ArborGen won a three-year, $6.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop GE loblolly pines for liquid biofuel production.
The matter, however, didn’t end here. Bennington says that four days
after the Gainesville “trespass” incident, when the activists were about
to start their presentation at Palm Beach State College in Boca Raton,
the college provost, Dr. Bernadette Russell, turned up at the venue,
called the assembled students out of the hall and informed them that the
FBI had contacted her in the morning and warned her to keep an eye on
the event because the activists could be “disruptive.” She then posted a
security guard in the building for the entire duration of the
presentation.
“It’s pretty astounding that running something as harmless as a
PowerPoint presentation can draw surveillance,” Bennington says. “To be
frank, we are on high alert now… We don’t really know what else to
expect.”
The college administration as well as the FBI field office in Miami
refused to comment on the incident, citing security protocols. But a
Palm Beach State College student who had helped organize the event
confirmed that Russell had indeed called the students out of the
classroom and relayed the warning.
“Basically, she just said that the FBI had contacted to her in the
morning because of the GE tree presentation and because some of the
organizers were from Earth First!,” Lily de la Espriella, a 20-year-old
environmental studies major, told me. She said the provost told her that
she should check with the administration before organizing such events
in the future. “I’ve helped organize other Earth First! events on campus
before, but this is the first time I was asked to seek special
permission,” De la Espriella says.
Bennington hopes these incidents will help show people how “the
government and industry are so close” and how they join forces to quash
dissent. (For a deeper look into how money influences US environmental
policy, read our Autumn 2012 cover story package, The Worst Environment Money Can Buy.
For more information on how corporations and law enforcement agencies
are spying on environmentalists, check out our Summer 2014 cover story, Prying Eyes. ) The rest of the speaking tour, it appears, went off more or less smoothly.
Back when I was looking for plant biologists to speak with about GE
trees, George Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, told me
there were very few who would be willing and able to speak out against
biotech in the US because agricultural and forest biotech companies,
control the research through money and through patents. “Scientists are
afraid,” Kimbrell said. “They are afraid of losing their grants, they
are afraid of losing their ability to research.”
If the Florida incidents are any indication, this fear of losing
funding extends to college and university administrations as well. As
Gainesville ethics professor Taylor says, “I don’t see universities as a
whole making the effort to have public debate about what’s going on
behind their lab doors.”Maureen Nandini Mitra, Managing Editor, Earth Island Journal.
In addition to her work at the Journal,
Maureen writes for several other magazines and online publications in
the US and India. A journalism graduate from Columbia University, her
work has appeared in the San Francisco Public Press, The New Internationalist, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, The Caravan and Down to Earth.

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FPL plant at the headwaters of the Loxahatchee Refuge

New view thanks to FPL and DEP from Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) 1E on Southern Blvd/SR80 which was recently opened for public recreation. [click image for more photos]

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Old Growth Bald Cypress in Barley Barber

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a note on this webpage from PBCEC co-chair:

"With a healthy fusion of enthusiasm and skepticism, we have taken a small step towards establishing a consistent presence in the virtual world for the PBCEC. The site will contain a mixture of updates, announcements, meeting notes, calls to action, fund-raising pleas, and ranting from a local grassroots ecological perspective. Your feedback and input is valued, but please also keep this in mind (here is the 'skepticism' part):

Our power does not come from the internet, it comes from real-live actions, face-to-face support for each other at meetings and events and our physical presence in-the-face of ecological degradation..

So use this site as an opportunity to keep up with and support the PBCEC's efforts; but please do not use it as an excuse to keep yourself indoors staring at this electronic screen. In other words, i hope to see y'all out in the streets, where the real changes need to happen!"

from within the wild weeds of the saw-and-sea-grass roots,panagioti tsolkassept. 23, 2007

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FPL's "Gateway to the Glades"

West County Energy Center units 1 and 2 in the Loxahatchee Basin, 1000 feet from the National Wildlife Refuge

Everglades Earth First! activists enter Barley Barber swamp

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Direct Action Gets the Goods!

Everglades Earth First! activists involved with PBCEC hang a banner on a billboard and over the side of a building on the southeast corner of Dixie Hwy. and Banyan in downtown West Palm Beach Monday afternoon to protest Callery-Judge and FPL developments. The protesters were there for nearly two hours before West Palm Beach police, with assistance from Palm Beach County firefighters, went up to remove them and carry them to jail. (Photo by Damon Higgins/PB Post)

PBCEC co-chair, panagioti tsolkas, gets arrested during rooftop protest downtown West Palm while sounding the alarm on Callery-Judge vote and FPL's sprawl-inspired power plant in western Palm Beach County. A day later, Callery-Judge was defeated in the County Commission. Litigation against FPL plant is still pending. Paul Revere would be proud... (Thanks to Damon Higgins/PB Post for photo)

Check out this piece of promotional material! Sorry FPL, it's not a very encouraging picture...

Tomorrow's plant may look more like a pile of rubble and a couple more federal indictments. And if we're to succeed in reducing our carbon emissions to level demanded to avert climate catastrophe, giant fossil fuel plants like FPL's Barley Barber pictured above will also have to go. It's time to wake up y'all...

This picture is from the FPL-owned Seabrook Nuke Plant, which had a recent accident...

The movement that successfully fought the nuclear industry 30 years ago, shutting down hundreds of proposed power plants across the world, must be revived against the fossil fuel giants--civil disobedience and all--if we are to avert the coming catastrophic climate change. The PBCEC will be hosting training to prepare for local civil disobedience protests locally.

Activists in Virginia put their bodies on the line to stop dirty power...

PBCEC activists joined the blockade last year to take a stand against mountaintop removal and climate change, this coming February, PBCEC will support Everglades Earth First! in hosting the annual Winter Rendezvous here in South Florida.

Florida Carbon Emissions Chart

Governor Crist's Executive Order calls for an 80% reduction of CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels by 2050. This figure is taken from statistics based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC).